Discussion of the Economy within ECC

Star Tools: The Cancerous Tumor Of Ecc

Im going to start off talking about star tools, the problems they cause, solutions? ect.

First off star tools cause inflation unmatched by anything in ECC. While the mining world reset always put money into the economy it grew massively with the addition of star tools. We've all seen the completely mined out 2 layers at y = 12 the byproduct of an Eff 7 pickaxe. After then selling all those minerals to the server players walk away an hour later with thousands of their newly printed ecodollars with which to add to the economy. The same is true with melon swords.

Secondly, the creation of star tools was tied with the destruction of the middle class on ECC. It was a short time, star tools were added, pumpkins were nerfed, wheat was nerfed, farming was nerfed. Melon swords werent making enough to warant their high cost, nether warts were nerfed after being the next go to crop .cocoa was nerfed soon after. wheat and pumpkins were nefed yet again. At the end of it all only a few things remained. And those things were star tools. Now this was at the time not that alarming. A star tool could be purchased for a costly yet reasonable 400k. However, yet more doom was upon the middle class. A reduction in voting sites cause the demand for nether stars to skyrocket and with them star tools. As people realised just how hard it was to make comparable money without them their price went up and up till it reached the price we see today. With the price tag on star tools the economy was divided into 2 classes. Those with star tools and those without.

So, how do we solve this massive inflation? This is the real problem. Star tools are the economy's sg kits, impossible to deal with once implemented. They all should really be removed causing the problems that they do. The problem with this is how on earth do we compensate those users who spend that money on the tool. Simply giving them nothing is unacceptable. This is where I am stumped. Nothing in the game is worth a star tool. (Ill come back to this later)

Now I want to talk about.... EXP. EXP is dealing with massive inflation. This problem to me seems more simple. A basic plan that I can think of is to 1. Raise the cost of enchants at the spawn shop massively. This will decrease the supply of enchanted tools if the demand for them goes up. 2. Increase the demand of enchanted tools. AKA: raise farming prices. Now im sure many people are wondering wont this just inflate the economy which is what you stated you did not want to do in your first paragraph. Well sadly, yes, it will. However, combined with the removal of star tools it should add less into the economy. And the important factor is that instead of all the money going into the hands of the upper class it will go to farmers with moderately expensive tools. Which will hopefully then become the middle class. However, the crucial part of this making the tools expensive enough to be available to a middle class but NOT to the lower class. This will likely require some testing.

Now, Paragraph 5. We removed star tools, we made basic enchant tools more expensive. (Note: The above thoughts would need A LOT of additions to do the things I just stated they are just short examples of something we could possibly do to increase tool prices.) So, what separates the upper class from the middle class. They would all have these newly created tools. This is another thing that needs work.

 

Having read the other posts, I will address some of their concerns.

Middle Class:
Why isn't there a prevalent middle class? It is because most new players don't last long enough to make it to that point. The early achievements (max tools, nice home) are easily obtained. Mayor isn't that great of a grind, and soon you'll own land. Then what? Most don't want another town immediately; they are working on their first. Star tools? They are to difficult a goal to be currently achieved. At this point, I see many leave. This idea of a "middle class" is really the transitional phase to upper class, and so the server becomes divided.

Eff7 and Melon Sword:
These can't be removed. It will eliminate a major goal for most players. For those that have them, it will create an uproar.

Nerfing the ExtCommands Features:
Again this will be met with strong opposition. $100 usd to be able to repair their tools and those of others. Nerfing this would be seen as "stealing". They paid for that feature and now it is being made ineffective or requires continual payment. What of extcommands++?

What then shall we do? There is no simple fix. This will never operate as a normal economy. Most items are easily attained and are unneeded. High supply and low demand. Hence, /sell.

Why do we play? Hedonism or escapism. What I see are the complaints that these wants are no longer being met. Everything is finite. What this server can offer will always be limited. Many fail to see this point. From this, the hub was born. We must continually add new frivolities to satisfy the boredom of those who have done it all. Add to the hub. Allow that to be the source of the new goals. The economy is far from "broken" leave it be.

 

so the problem we were discussing in chat was the economical state of ECC. Currently we have a very inflated currency and for some, a deep hatred of "Star tools" which "ruined everthing".

So as we have it now, ECC's currency system is primarily based on the purchasing of Ranks and High end tools such as star tools through nether stars. Currently nether stars are only acting as an in between currency from item to dollars. They are essentially equivalent for the purposes of the economical flow of money.

The current dynamic has a very differentiated distribution of wealth.
- We have insanely rich people, who have been on the server for a long time, who either: A) Spend all there money on lotteries, toys and whatever they feel like; all to turn around and re earn it all back).
Or B) Hoard all their money.

and then -
We have newer people or mostly poor people. Their goal is to get to the top. To become a rich person like above, and to do that: Star tools. So they shoot for this item, its their goal. Once achieved, they use it to boost themselves in ranking, then they become part of the richer population.

Of this dynamic, once you hit the ceiling or the top rich, there isn't much to do. This starts to trickle down to the poorer people. Now that we have star tools floating around: Mining is really easy, cobble, dirt, ores, farming materials. They are all used just as a way to convert into Eco dollars to do whatever with. They have no demand, no purpose, and no desire. This leads to some people hating the star tools because it causes materials to become "useless". Though in this dynamic, they already are.


So with the now current state of the system (in my opinion/mind or what I have seen thus far in the economy), lets look at what we can do to fix some of these problems of wealth distribution and further allow both poorer members and richer members to strive for more things.

There are a couple things, in my mind, that we can do to fix some of the issues stated above.

Path 1:
Perishable money sinks in order to drain the economy of cash and decrease inflation, as well as perishable sinks for materials as well.
- Lets say we have a couple perishable money sinks such as "pets" or "monster spawners". These only last a temporary amount of time and cost lots of money or material. They act like star tools but are perishable and lost after time. This forces both new players and veteran players to strive and dump money to get these rewards as well as gives material a flexible demand.

Path 2:
Continuously adding money sinks such as star tools (But with less "Power" or capability of making materials irrelevant IE: super easy diamonds or farming materials). Then both new players and veteran players will strive to achieve these new "things". Same as the above path but with non perishable items, but continuously more and more rewards.

So now that we have these "striving factors" or things to achieve; How does that help the economy? What do we do from there?

These striving factors will allow us to increase demand for materials, and give players a reason to keep moving forwards.

Put into Practice (An Example of what was talked about):
1) "Lets say we want to put this into practice by adding a new item, a Monster Spawner. It lasts 1 week and can spawn a variety of monsters (Zombies, Skeletons, Blazes, etc). The Monster Spawners cost 100,000 eco dollars as well as specific materials dependent on the monster.
- Zombies Spawners: 100,000 eco dollars + 1 chest full of gold ingots.
- Skeleton Spawners: 100,000 eco dollars + 1 chest full of diamonds.

The materials dropped of these mobs: zombie flesh + bones can be saved to purchase cool things. IE: a double chest of bones can get you a wither skeleton skull or a chest full of zombie flesh can be used to buy access to a new veterans world or whatever. Something cool.

This implements both a perishable reward: monster spawners and a permanent reward: access to a new world or a cool tool, whatever.

Adding stackable features such as 1 thing leading to another, allows both new players and veterans to have fun striving for more. Monster spawners maybe the first thing new players REALLY want, but veterans REALLY want the access the spawners give. Kind of like the way rankings currently work. Tieing in both materials and currency will help increase demand for specific items, as well as clear out money and materials from circulation (therefore increasing there value).

If a spawner costs: 1 chest of coal, 1 chest of wheat, 1 chest of carrots, 1 chest of melons, 1 chest of iron, 1 chest of diamonds <-- something like this for a really good spawner. This will allow new players to find any niche they want, farming: wheat, carrots, melons, iron or diamonds to sell to richer or more veteran players trying to get their spawners, who then sell them to even RICHER players who are trying to gain access to the reward of the spawners.

This affect will trickle down from macro (rich) to micro (poor). Now all of these materials that are used for these "spawners" have added value. Rather then just doing /sell hand, other players will need these, it will drive the price of them UP. Because spawners are temporary, there will be a constant demand for these materials. Prices for materials will go up, and currency inflation will go down with the money funneling into temporary "spawners". Instead of rich people chuckling over lotteries, they can be trying to achieve a new spawner, or replace an old one, or achieve something even higher.

This dynamic requires a constant flow upwards, but no matter what there will always be a cap. Theres always going to be someone hard core enough to push to the top before you have time to add new content. BUT, it allows a lot more flexibility for giving specific items more of a demanded value, rather then just a /sell currency baseline.

Overall this is just a tiny example of the practices i was talking about at the beginning . It can be implemented in a variety of ways, but it comes down to: Giving demand for specific materials that people are farming, and taking away large amounts of currency people are hoarding. With these 2 goals met, people should be constantly trying to get more and more. It also forces richer people to help the poorer people in the economy (unless of course, they would like to farm for all those materials or good themselves) without necessarily stomping on others with their star tools to give them even MORE "money" for chuckling over lotteries.

 

Manifest Destiny

 

reserved to talk about my silverfish petting zoo

 

Can somebody actually write something? Enough with the reserves just get your thoughts down lol. I want to see what you guys think/say first before I share my own thoughts

 

I really enjoy this idea Panamonium99, creating a system in which we actually create demand for materials. However, there is already a way that the server has done this and that is with the collector medals. Im pretty sure its if you provide a double chest full or emerald blocks or a certain amount of exp, then the server collects it and you get the medal. I can remember not too long ago when a player was going for the emerald one and prices shot up for it as demand was up. There isnt a collector medal for every block of course, but that is just one way that drives up the demand for an item.

Now, certain items are only in demand when a player needs it. I remember when I first opened my market station, I was told that the only way a specific block would sell was if a big player was making a huge build and simply needed a bunch of supply of that specific block. Other than that, there is virtually 0 demand for that block and the same can go for many other blocks as well. This is all basically just adding to what obble has stated in that the overall demand of these items is very low.

I like the idea of being able to repair a tool with materials rather than just getting erepair. This would for sure increase demand however the problem with this is that people with erep would feel that it would just be throwing their use away. There would be no point in buying erep if you can just use in-game mats to repair it yourself.

Lastly going back to what Panamonium99 said, I love the idea of stackable features. Making a certain item cost ecc + materials and then that item would lead to more materials which can also be used for something greater.... its brilliant. I cant think of any specific examples or ways we can do this but Id love to hear more of this idea if you have any.

 

Also... What do we even consider to be the lower, middle, and upper class? I asked a player the other day what they considered to be rich and they responded with 300k. That is upper class for them but to me, i would think that that would only be middle class.

The only way to find these answers is by looking at all the data and statistics and that is something only Nicit has access to..... For all we know over half he server could have 2 mill cash in their balance and just choose to keep it private. We also dont know how much money is being circulated daily, how much money is even in the server atm, or even exactly how much is being brought into/taken out of the server on a daily basis. The only way to know this is if we are provided that data and to my knowledge, only @Nicit6 has access to that info.

This may be a bit of a stretch and i dont mean to imply that I dont trust nicit's abilities because I do, but what if we allocated a specific group of users or mods to have access to this data and be able to analyze it? I think this would help tremendously because it would allow more people to get a more real sense of the state of ECC's economy and make certain suggestions on how to fix these issues such as inflation that many users have suggested is happening. What do you think of this and perhaps forming a team of "economists" for the server.... I mean after all we are a hardcore economy server so to me this only makes sense to put more focus into it. @Nicit6 what do you think of this?

 

@obblebobble the problem isn't necessarily the giant goal of reaching a star tool but the disparity between the star tool and the next best option. Assuming the middle class was people who can afford eff 5 tools with which to earn money that means it takes 3 hours to get middle class which is then followed by 90 hours to get a star tool. Since 3 hours is nothing at all you end up not even really having a middle class.​

 

Something obviously needs to be done to reduce the amount of money in the economy. I do not however support the idea of removing star tools. Yes they are adding lots of money to the economy, but star tools are one of the main purposes on ECC and in my opinion, and should not be removed. Along with being a very large importance, some people seem to be forgetting how long it actually takes to get a star tool. It takes a long period of time to save up enough money to even afford a star tool, and requires at least some effort to get their money back.

What I am about to say next may be very unpopular, but I am hoping that people can at least consider the benefits. Also know that this would only be an accurate solution if money gets EXTREMELY inflated and the economy is getting out of hand. If we were to reduce the server buying prices of mining goods & crops (and maybe some valuable blocks), it would generally make money more valuable within the economy. This would make players work harder for the same amounts of money. This can be a solution to a time when things have gotten very bad within the economy. I'm sure there are many other ways to deflate money, yet if this cause continues to worsen it may be worth it to make these changes to maintain a steady economy.